Over the weekend, Yemi Osinbajo, vice-president underwent surgery to correct a leg fracture in a hospital that began operations last year in Ikeja, Lagos.
The Duchess International Hospital is a 110-bedded, fully en suite hospital facility that offers primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare services across a range of specialist and sub-speciality areas.
The hospital is a product of the Reddington Hospital Group that has joined first-tier hospitals such as First Cardiology and Lagoon Hospital among others in the race to reverse medical tourism from Nigeria.
Players such as Duchess are closing in on a market that has been controlled over time by leading medical facilities in countries like India, Germany, the US, UK, and Dubai, owing to weak infrastructure, poor government spending, and rising loss of medical professionals to improved working conditions elsewhere.
India alone accounts for more than half of $1.5 billion that Nigeria spends yearly to purchase medical services overseas, according to the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA).
Duchess parades some of the scarce devices in the country, including catheterisation laboratory, mammogram, ultrasound, X-Ray machines, ventilators, and anaesthetic machines among other medical technologies. It also commands an array of experts such as the six who carried the surgery on the vice-president. Here are the experts:
Wallace Ogufere:
Wallace Ogufere is a consultant orthopaedic surgeon with specialist knowledge in treatments regarding upper limb disorders. These include shoulder replacement surgery, shoulder arthroscopy, carpal tunnel syndrome surgery, ganglion removal surgery, joint manipulation and joint paint treatment using injections. He also has an interest in Dupuytren’s contracture.
He earned a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) degree from the University of Benin, Edo State, Nigeria in 1985.
In 1992, he joined the Fellowship of Royal College of Surgeons (FRCS) at Edinburgh and grabbed another FRCS in Trauma and Orthopaedics Intercollegiate Board in 1997.
Om Lahoti:
Om Lahoti is a consultant orthopaedic surgeon who has worked with the NHS, UK since 1993. He got his basic medical and postgraduate orthopaedic training in India, Ireland and South East of England. He completed post-graduate training at Guys Hospital, London.
He obtained intercollegiate board qualification (FRCS Orth) in 1997 and completed fellowship training in paediatric orthopaedics and limb reconstruction in Dublin and Sheffield.
He started his first consultant job at University Hospital Lewisham and then moved to King’s College Hospital in 2003 due to his interest in advanced limb reconstruction and has been working till date.
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He also has a keen interest in post-graduate teaching and is currently an examiner for the Intercollegiate Board of Examination in Orthopaedic Surgery.
Currently, he is the president of the British Limb Reconstruction Society (BLRS).
Babajide Lawson:
Babajide Lawson is a consultant orthopaedic surgeon currently with the Reddington Hospital. His practice has been devoted to hip and knee surgical reconstruction, arthroscopy of the shoulder and hips and knees complimenting. He also focuses on non-emergent complex trauma cases are also handled.
He earned a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) degree from the University of Ilorin in 2000 and joined the Fellowship West African College of Surgeons in 2009.
In 2013, he became an AO Fellow in Complex trauma and General Orthopaedics, armed with experience in advanced trauma techniques.
Kenneth Adegoke:
Kenneth Adegoke was born at The Hammersmith Hospital, London to Nigerian immigrant parents who travelled to England in the 1960s. Ken attended St Gregory’s College Obalende Lagos and went to obtain a medical degree from the University College Hospital, Ibadan in 1988.
Ken did his internship at Lagos University Teach Hospital (LUTH), Lagos Nigeria in 1989, spending three months each in Medicine, Surgery, Paediatrics Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
In 1990, Ken began his anaesthetics training in the UK, obtaining his Certificate of Completion of Specialist Training in 1998 from the Kings College Hospital, London.
In 2001, Ken became a consultant anaesthetist and intensivist at The Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother Hospital, Margate, Kent, UK.
Oladimeji Agbabiaka:
Oladimeji Agbabiaka graduated from the College of Medicine of the University of Ilorin, Ilorin in 2003. He was admitted into the Anaesthesia Fellowship Program of the West African College of Surgeons [WACS] at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital [LUTH].
Agbabiaka obtained Diploma in Anaesthesia and was awarded the Fellowship [Anaesthesia] of the West African College of Surgeons [FWACS] in 2017.
He has extensive experience in anaesthesia and critical care management, including functioning as an anaesthetist at the Lagoon Hospital in Ikeja and Ikoyi, Lagos.
Dosunmu-Ogunbi:
Adedoyin Dosunmu-Ogunbi, is an internal medicine specialist who has practised for over 36 years in Montgomery, Alabama, United States.
He graduated from the College of Medicine of the University of Lagos in 1986 and joined the Emory University School of Medicine through a fellowship in 1993.
Dosunmu-Ogunbi currently works as the medical director at Duchess International Hospital and led the vice-president’s surgery.
